Film Fan Fridays for Friday August 29, 2008!

Hello Film Fans and Fanatics!

Welcome to Film Fan Fridays for Friday August 29, 2008! Well it is officially getting to the end of summer, August is almost gone, warm days are cheered for in an almost anticipatory nostalgic sense, the CNE has been open for ages and the pre-festival ticketing process for the Toronto International Film Festival has begun.

The weeks releases feature an odd hodge-podge of 'get those suckers out before the end of summer' and minimal limited releases. In terms of watching the trailers, it was not the most inspiring week! But as always, I'm sure there are some gems in there.

In limited release this week we have just two films. First up is Outsourced, a 2006 TIFF selection centred on a US call centre employee that must go to India to train his replacement. Interesting premise, but I get a little leery of 'cross cultural connections that include comedy' but this one has received high praise and looks pretty sweet in nature. Next up is Goal II: Living the Dream which is a sequel to the film Goal! released in the UK in 2005 but never released in Canada. It focuses on a footballer (soccer for us North Americans) trying to make it big.

In wide release this week we have four releases the most interesting one I would have to say is Babylon A.D. which was anticipated to be released back in Feb 2008 and the strong buzz on it was the upset that the US rating would be PG-13. Now, it's finally here with a 14A in Ontario and well I'm still interested despite all that because it's action/sci-fi movie starring Vin Diesel and also has Michelle Yeoh in it. Traitor is another wide release this week, it stars Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce and unfortunately I don't know much more than that as the trailers show too much too fast that it's hard to determine much other than possible conspiracy which you get from the title alone. Looks interesting, but not enough non spoiler information is available to form an opinion on it. This leaves us two more films in release: College and Disaster Movie which is odd to see them released in the same week as they appear to have the same target market. College feels like a bit of an anomaly as its a film is about high schools pretending to be college students, not people starting college which makes the release time feel a little odd. It's also rated R in the States, so will their target market be able to see the film? No rating information found in terms on Ontario classification. Disaster Movie is another spoof movie, but I have to say it is quite a feat the turn around time into the theatre considering that it spoofs almost all of the big summer blockbusters from this year. It also provided me with the funniest piece of trivia of the week, one of the working titles for it was Meet the Spartans 2: The Story of McLover & The Kingdom of the Crystal Beer Can. That almost makes up for watching the trailer. Almost.

Have a great weekend!

Shannon

Festival Watch

Ashkenaz Festival 2008
A festival of New Yiddish Culture
Festival runs August 26 - September 1, 2008
Films screenings are from Aug 30-Sept 1/08 at the Studio theatre in Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Toronto International Film Festival
September 4 - 13, 2008 at various locations in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Be sure to check out daily coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival at Movie Moxie with polls, reviews and vlogs.

Friday August 29, 2008 Releases

Babylon A.D.
Dir: Mathieu Kassovitz (Gothika, Les Rivières pourpres / The Crimson Rivers)
Cast: Vin Diesel, Mélanie Thierry, Michelle Yeoh, Gérard Depardieu
USA/France
Official Film Site (autoplays trailer), IMDb Page, Trailer
Trailer spoiler free for first third, major spoilers in last third

College
Dir: Deb Hagan - feature film directorial debut
Cast: Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell, Kevin Covais
USA
Official Film Site (autoplays trailer), IMDb Page, Trailer
Trailer spoiler free until 2/3rd in

Disaster Movie
Writers/Dirs: Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer (Meet the Spartans, Epic Movie)
Cast: Vanessa Minnillo, Nicole Parker, Crista Flanagan, Matt Lanter, G. Thang
USA
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer
Entire trailer is spoilers

Goal II: Living the Dream
Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax <2005>)
Cast: Kuno Becker, Anna Friel, Stephen Dillane, Leonor Varella, Rutger Hauer
UK
Limited Release
Official Film Site & Trailer, IMDb Page
Trailer spoiler free for first third

Outsourced
Dir: John Jeffcoat (Bingo! The Documentary)
Cast: Josh Hamilton, Ayesha Dharker
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site & Trailer (autoplays music - pause is on bottom right) IMDb Page
Trailer spoiler free until 3/4 the way through

Traitor
Writer/Dir: Jeffrey Nachmanoff (Hollywood Palms)
Cast: Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Saïd Taghmaoui, Neal McDonough, Archie Panjabi)
USA
Official Film Site (autoplays trailer), IMDb Page, Trailer
Both Trailer 1 & 2 have spoilers, I stopped watching them almost immediately

**please note this list of releases reflects first run film released in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as of August 29, 2008**